Opononi to Ahipara

July 9, 2009

It was another 7 am wake up today. The sun hadn’t quite begun to rise yet but I could hear the birds outside. I pointed out to Raven that I could hear a morepork, which is the native NZ owl. Raven listened and heard it too. It is called a morepork because that is the sound of its call. “Morepork, morepork!” It was a nice way to wake up. I had heard one in Matakohe at night too and it was nice to know it wasn’t just in my head. We woke up and Tui came back into the hostel. She sat right next to me on the bed, making it much more difficult to get up. Raven got ready first and when I got ready she started breakfast. Since there aren’t any outlets, we made toast on the gas stove. I went outside to take pictures of the sunrise and the layer of clouds amongst the hills and Raven saw me doing that and came out to take pictures as well. She made some comment about the potatoes cooking and I went inside to check on them. They looked fine and then I turned and saw the toast. It too looked fine until I lifted it up. It was completely black. We brought it outside and it smoked up the room. We tried the toast again and all of a sudden the smoke alarm went off. Soooooo loud. LOL! I think the entire hillside could hear us… except for the landlord. It rang and rang, we went outside to take pictures then when we realized that she wasn’t coming we went back in and started to pack up. Maybe 5-10 minutes later she finally showed up and shut it off. It was really funny.

We left around 9:30 or so and headed back down the highway so that we could see the kauri trees we’d missed the night before. We both agreed that we wanted to see Tane Mahuta, the largest kauri tree in New Zealand. We headed back down and could fully appreciate how beautiful the forest was in the daylight. We got to Tane Mahuta and there was no one around. We walked along the incredible trail taking pictures and all of a sudden, I looked up and realized that we were next to the tree. It was truly an incredible sight and one of those moments that won’t adequately be captured by a picture. The tree was so big and majestic. Yes, the redwoods in California are bigger but this tree was truly remarkable.

We left the park and headed back north towards our destination. We drove back through Opononi and bought some ridiculously expensive gas where some farmers were filling up their tractor with diesel and the gas attendant chatted on her phone. We then headed to the i-site to pick up more brochures before heading up to Raware to take the ferry across. It was a very small ferry, kind of like the ferry in the San Juans and it quickly took us across the river with maybe 12 other cars.

We then headed up towards Ahipara where we decided that we wanted to stay tonight. We found our hostel and it’s fabulous! It’s part of a larger holiday park so there are cabins and motor homes as well but we’re in the backpacker lodge and we have the whole place to ourselves! After we settled in, we got back in our car to go get lunch and go to Cape Reinga. Lunch took way longer than we’d wanted since we were on a time crunch but we finally got our food and headed on our way. Cape Reinga is at the tip of the Ninety Mile Beach, which is the northern tip of New Zealand. A lot of people take a bus and drive up the beach itself for 90 miles but we didn’t feel right about that so we drove up the road. It took a few hours and we got to the end of the paved road around 4:30. We turned onto the unpaved road and drove until we got to a sign mentioning the giant sand dunes. We turned off and drove to the dunes and OMG, it was awesome! The dunes truly are enormous and we hiked up one of the smaller dunes to take pictures and slide back down. The sun was beginning to set so we decided to head back towards Ahipara. We did so and came back to the hostel where I’ve been having connection issues. I need to sign off now since I’ve left poor Raven in the room while I sit out here freezing and typing on my laptop. I think I will have internet access tomorrow. If not, I’ll post again as soon as I am able!